The Saints had matches against some good teams this past week and came up short.

The Saints started out with hosting Blue Earth Area at home on Friday night. The Saints had a lot of motivation to wrestle their best. It was senior night, it was the last home meet of the year and the SCC Championship was on the line.

But it was BEA that came away with the win and the regular dual meet championship when they beat the Saints 33-22.

Saints Head Coach Gene Hildebrandt said it was the first time in some time that BEA had a stacked team.

“BEA has a good team. They just outwrestled us.” Hildebrandt said. The Head Coach said many Saints fans came up after the match and said to him that it was a ‘good old fashioned’ wrestling match.

The match got off on the wrong foot as Mario Garcia lost a decision at 106 lbs. Hildebrandt was hoping for a win at 106 as that would have likely cemented a good Saints lead through the lower weights.

As the match played out, the Saints still wrestled well in the lower weights and got out to a 15-3 lead.

Angel Zamarripa got a one point win at 113 lbs. by an 8-7 score. In his last dual meet home match, a very motivated senior Cody Hanson got a pin in 1:27 of the first period. He pointed up to the crowd after recording the fall.

Two more seniors got decisions at 126 and 132. Richy Soto got a 6-3 win and that was followed by Isaac Carreon eeking out a 2-0 win.

BEA came back and racked up 21 team points to bolt out to a 24-15 lead before the Saints had another win.

The Saints lost four point major decisions at 138 and 145. Mark Alvarado lost at 138 by a score of 9-1 and Kody Curry lost by an 11-3 score at 145 lbs.

Major decisions are awarded when a wrestler has at least eight points in a match, so these two back to back eight point wins gave BEA two additional team points.

Zack Gleiter lost a tough match at 152 lbs. by a score of 9-5. At 160 lbs. the Saints Carlos Marquez lost by a technical fall at 160 lbs. This pushed BEA into the lead by a 19-15 score.

The Saints Colin Hoppe also lost by a technical fall and BEA added another five team points.

Ryan Westman got the Saints back in the winning column at 182 lbs with a 12-2 major decision.

Page 2 of 3 - Trailing 24-19 the Saints had a shot at winning the match and the conference championship if they could win out.

Devin Wolle, who has been wrestling in three different weight classes this year, stepped up into 195 and took on a tough Kysten Zierke.

Wolle was taken down in the last fifteen seconds of the first period, but managed to escape with two seconds remaining to trail 2-1 at the end of period one.

Wrestling from the down position, he escaped late in the second period to tie it up at two at the end of two.

Wolle controlled his opponent through the first minute of the third period, but Zierke escaped and Wolle made a risky attempt to prevent the escape. That resulted in a takedown by the Buccanneer and the BEA wrestle put Wolle on his back for two more points and a 7-2 decision.

A decision and a pin at the last two weights could still give the Saints the championship. It was up to brothers Adrian Torres at 220 and Victor Torres at HWT.

Adrian dominated his man at 220 and had a 3-0 in the third period. Adrian made a high risk move going for a pin and was instead put on his back and pinned. He deserves credit for not playing it safe.

Victor won the HWT match by a 6-3 win. That gave BEA the match and the championship with a final score of 33-22.

The Saints wrestled eight seniors last Friday. BEA wrestled four seniors, so the Bucs are likely going to be a team the Saints will have to contend with next year.

On Saturday, the Saints hit the road for a triangular meet against two strong teams at Canby. Waconia was the other team at the meet.

The Saints lost to Canby 33-27. The toughest part of this loss was Isaac Carreon wrestling at 132 lbs. lost by an injury default. This gave Canby six points.

Carreon had previously pinned the Canby wrestler and had his opponent on his back when Isaac suffered a knee injury.

This default loss might have been a twelve point swing against the Saints. With the twelve points the Saints would have won the match. The injury status of Isaac is not know for certain at this time. The Saints also lost to a solid Waconia team 37-29 on Saturday.

On Tuesday night the Saints hit the road to Sibley-East and wrestled in a triangular against Sibley East and Norwood-Young America. The matches went late into the night. At deadline the Plaindealer had the team scores. The Saints split beating NYA by a score of 57-9. The Saints fell to Sibley East 39-19.

Page 3 of 3 - For the week the Saints were 1-4. However, the toughest loss of the week might be the one to Isaac Carreon, who went to state last year, if his injury proves to be serious.